Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  While Walter and Connie remained married, it was a union solely in name and finances. “I started working for Walter in 1987,” said Tucker. “I didn’t even know he was married until probably a year later. I just thought Connie was the mother of his kids.” Shortly after his retirement, Payton—a spokesperson for Inland Property, a real estate firm—was provided with a free fully furnished two-bedroom apartment on Chestnut Street in downtown Chicago. He eventually split his time between there, a 3,500-square foot home he purchased in the Chicago suburb of West Dundee, Illinois, and the family house at 34 Mudhank (depending on when he wanted to be at the house with Jarrett, now seven, and Brittney, three). Husband and wife spoke when necessary, and Walter’s dalliances were becoming common knowledge throughout Chicago. He confided in those he was close with that, when his children graduated high school, he would divorce Connie once and for all. “He didn’t want the children to go through the rigors of a celebrity divorce,” said Tucker. “He knew what the spotlight felt like when it was negative, and he hated the idea of Jarrett and Brittney experiencing any of that.”

  To those he trusted, Walter claimed he had never actually wanted to marry Connie; that the pressures of being young and alone had forced him to make a terrible mistake. He didn’t necessarily hate her, but there was no love or, for that matter, like. There hadn’t been for a long time. “Walter knew that if he left Connie all the work he’d done to his image would go by the wayside,” said Ron Atlas, his longtime friend. “Connie was very well liked, and that was a problem. When they were a real couple, friends would always side with Connie when they argued, because she seemed like such a sweet person.”

  Of all the people he knew, Payton’s closest confidant was, interestingly, Ginny Quirk. Irrepressibly upbeat and perky, the native Chicagoan was twenty-one years old and freshly dropped out of the University of Wisconsin–Stout when, in the late months of 1984, a headhunter sent her to interview for an executive assistant’s job with “a high-profile businessman.”

  “I was told the person needed someone who could travel, someone who could take the ball and run with it, someone who could wear a lot of hats and handle a lot of assignments,” said Quirk. “Until I walked in the door to interview with him, I had no idea the businessman was Walter Payton.”

  Upon being hired, it took Quirk approximately twenty seconds to understand the craziness of celebrity. Payton needed someone to organize his massive piles of fan mail (“I hired a slew of temps to knock it out and get a system in place.”), to handle speaking engagements (“He made between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars a talk, and was brilliant at it.”), to oversee merchandising, and to make sure he never forgot or overlooked a request. Payton insisted on hiring a night owl, and Quirk soon learned why. He called her up to thirty times per day. At two in the morning. Again at three in the morning. Again at four in the morning. He asked her to check in on Holmes and Richman. He needed her to take care of something involving the children. He complained to her about Connie and confided in her about other women. Not for approval—just because, well, it seemed like she should know. When one saw Walter, one almost always saw Ginny. She was his shadow. Or, to be accurate, he was hers. “I talked to Walter more than any family member, more than any friend or boyfriend,” she said. “Before cell phones were widespread he had this beeper that went off all the time. Then he had this big ol’ Motorola cell phone, and he’d use it constantly. He was addicted to knowing if anything was going on—‘Ginny, anybody call? Ginny, what you got? Ginny, tell me something.’ He could drive me crazy. Really insane. But, at the same time, he became a family member. I loved him, and would have done anything for him.”

  The burden of loneliness and a dreadful marriage weren’t Payton’s only problems. As a player Payton had numbed his maladies with pills and liquids, usually supplied by the Bears. Now that he was retired, the self-medicating only intensified. Payton relied on Tylenol 3 and Vicodin, mixing the two drugs into cocktails he habitually ingested. In a particularly embarrassing episode, in 1988 Payton visited a handful of dental offices, complaining of severe tooth pain. He was supplied with different prescriptions for morphine, and hit up a handful of drugstores to have them filled. When one of the pharmacists noticed the activity, he contacted the authorities, who arrived at Payton’s house and discussed the situation. Payton was merely issued a warning. “Walter was pounding his body with medication,” said Holmes. “I wish I knew how bad it was, but at the time I really didn’t.”

  Back when Payton drove his own RV to training camp, he used to load the rear of the vehicle with tanks of nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas. Used primarily in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic effects, Payton was provided with the chemical by a friend who dabbled in medical supplies. At nights and during breaks in the action, players snuck into Payton’s trailer, loaded the nitrous oxide into balloons, then carried them around while taking hits. The goofy laughter could be heard throughout the training facility.

  Now that he was retired, Payton turned to nitrous oxide more than ever. Large tanks filled up a corner of his garage, and he held a gas-stuffed balloon throughout portions of his days, taking joyous hits whenever the impulse struck. “I don’t think Walter was addicted,” said a friend. “But he sure liked it.”

  In need of some semblance of sanity, Payton decided the best he could do was throw himself into as many activities as possible, hoping one or two would fill the void. He took helicopter lessons. He bought more guns. He looked for antique automobiles. He dabbled in golf. He ran a nightclub and shot a man in the leg.

  Throughout his playing career, Payton—guided largely by Holmes and Richman—refused to simply allow his money to collect interest. He was an active investor, ranging from a twenty-six-acre shopping center to a sevenmillion-dollar, two-hundred-room hotel to 934 acres of undeveloped timberland in northern Mississippi to a Learjet that he and his partners rented out. A couple paid dividends—Payton and Holmes made a small fortune on the Lakeland Health Care Center, a nursing home in Lakeland, Florida. Most did not—Payton lost a large sum by investing in something called Heavyrope, a weighted–jump rope, and he was one of several athletes to find themselves swindled by Miles Yanca, a ticket broker who was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a scheme that cost investors millions of dollars. “Walter didn’t put a lot of real effort into being a businessman,” said Quirk. “Bud tried to tell him that he needed to pay attention and manage his own stuff, but Walter didn’t have the patience for meetings. He was really smart, and he could read people better than anyone I’ve ever met. But when it came to businesses, he trusted the judgment of others. Sometimes that works. Oftentimes it doesn’t.”

  Payton had hoped to retire into a carefree life of fishing and hunting. Much of the money he had earned as a player, however, was gone, lost to bad investments and lavish purchases. He told those around him that he wanted to work. Truth was, he had no choice.

  Of his many holdings, the one Payton enjoyed most was Studebaker’s, a 1950s-themed nightclub and lounge located within a strip mall in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. Back in 1981, Holmes and a Houston, Texas–based businessman named Stuart Sargent teamed to open the first Studebaker’s in Mobile, Alabama. A second, in Jackson, Mississippi, followed shortly thereafter, then three more in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Dallas. “Our goal was to have a nightclub for adults in their thirties and forties—one that wasn’t dark and didn’t come with an owner wearing a thick gold chain with a fake blonde on his arm,” said Gene Gunn, an early investor. “We had done a lot of smaller Southern markets, and one day I asked Stuart whether he wanted to give it a go in some major northern cities. That’s where Walter came in.”

  A Studebaker’s opened in Chicago in 1983, and that same year the Schaumburg location came to life. Payton picked the strip mall, interviewed and hired most of the staff, used his name to bring instant credibility. Before long, the club was a line-around-the-block hotspot for mostly middle-aged reveler
s. People from throughout the region drove to 1251 East Golf Road to groove to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and watch the poodleskirted waitresses perform choreographed dances atop the bar. At the same time the television sitcom Cheers was introducing America to a colorful gaggle of bar regulars, Studebaker’s had its own clan of loyal customers who showed up nightly for the bountiful buffet and classic music. A genuine family atmosphere was cultivated, and Payton cherished it.

  “That was really Walter’s baby,” said Quirk. “He opened a lot of other nightclubs over the next few years, but Studebaker’s meant the most to him. He’d be in the deejay booth spinning records, in the kitchen waving to customers from the back, telling jokes to the employees. He was in his element.”

  Payton so loved being at Studebaker’s that a cluttered, dingy, three-hundred-square-foot storeroom in the rear became his base of business operations. Upon retiring from the Bears, he spent increasingly long hours hunkered down in the cramped space. The nightclub’s employees came to embrace Payton, who would hang out in the alley outside the rear entrance as they smoked cigarettes. Payton always seemed to have some sort of valuable handout—expensive cigars, five-hundred-dollar sunglasses—and he distributed the goods with great zest. “He was so empathetic to us,” said Lana Layne, an employee. “There was no arrogance.”

  Lou Visconti, a disc jockey from 1984 to 1992, recalled telling Payton that, at six dollars an hour, he could no longer afford to spin records.

  “Is that all we’re paying you?” Payton asked.

  “Yes,” said Visconti. “I can’t live on it.”

  “Come back tomorrow,” Payton said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The next day, Visconti was informed that he would be making thirty-two thousand dollars annually, plus benefits. “Walter gave me my first salaried job,” he said. “How many people can say the first raise they ever received was from Walter Payton?”

  Layne began working at Studebaker’s as a nineteen-year-old waitress in 1989. One morning, when her eight-year-old brother, Douglas, was off from school, she brought him to the bar. Before leaving home, she called and asked her boss whether he’d be willing to shake her brother’s hand. “Of course,” said Payton. “I’d be happy to.”

  “We get there, and Walter grabs Douglas, takes him into his office, and spends about two hours with him,” said Layne. “He came away with a bunch of photographs and a football Walter signed. All he had to do to make Douglas’ day was say hello. But he went so much further.”

  One of Payton’s favorite employees was Elmer Hutson, a twenty-eight-year-old manager known to the entire Studebaker’s staff as J. R. Based out of Miami, Hutson was asked by McFadden Ventures, Studebaker’s parent company, to move to Illinois in 1987 and help manage the Schaumburg entity. Having never been to Chicago, he jumped at the opportunity.

  On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 13, 1988, Hutson arrived early at the bar, to make certain his staff had cleaned ably the night before. While there, he engaged in a heated phone exchange with Mike McKenna, a representative from Coors Light. Fifteen minutes after hanging up, Hutson was summoned to see Payton. “I walk into his office, and he had a couch and two chairs up against the wall,” said Hutson. “He was sitting on one chair and Mike McKenna—who came to complain about me—was in the other. I sat down on the arm of the couch, so the three of us were in a triangle. Walter had the phone to his ear, talking to Connie.”

  In his right hand, Payton was holding a 9mm French-made Manurhin Pistolet, which he had recently purchased for his collection. As he spoke with his wife, Payton repeatedly spun the gun, jokingly pointing it toward Hutson. “He twirled it a couple of times, then came back up with the gun and put it down again,” Hutson said. “That’s when it went off.”

  To the shock of the three men, a bullet exploded from the weapon and entered Hutson’s left knee. It fragmented his kneecap, traveled nine inches up his thigh, took out approximately two inches of hamstring, and all of his cartilage. The bullet exited through the rear of the leg, leaving a three-inch hole.

  Hutson fell to the floor and grasped his leg. “Was the gun loaded?” he screamed. Payton instinctively dropped the weapon. “Oh my God!” he said. “I almost aimed higher!”

  “It felt like my entire leg was on fire,” said Hutson. “It was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced.”

  Payton immediately dialed 911, and followed with a call to his attorney. The bar’s on-duty employees rushed to see what had happened. “Walter shot J. R.!” somebody yelled. “Walter shot J. R.!” An ambulance rushed Hutson to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, where a nurse asked him whether he had contacted his parents. “No,” Hutson said, “I haven’t.”

  “Well, you better do it now,” she said. “Because the story’s about to be released to the Associated Press wire.”

  Indeed, the next morning the news of the NFL’s all-time leading rusher gunning down an employee had swept the nation. Hundreds of papers carried the story, and radio’s talking heads wondered whether Payton would face charges. Payton visited the hospital and apologized profusely. When Hutson returned home ten days later, he was greeted by a new set of lefthanded Wilson golf clubs, accompanied by a note from Payton. “I believe Walter was genuinely sorry,” said Hutson. “He was a nice man who I really respected.”

  One year after the shooting, however, a limping, pain-stricken Hutson was let go by the club for what, he said, was no apparent reason. He later sued Studebaker’s for failing to provide him with proper health coverage, and the business—to Hutson’s shock/dismay—actually countersued. Though he doesn’t directly blame Payton (“It’s a chain,” Hutson said. “He was just an investor.”), Hutson lost much of the fondness he had for his old boss. “They actually made the argument that, knowing there was a loaded gun in the room, I should have taken precautions not to get shot,” Hutson said. “It would almost be humorous, were my leg not in such bad shape.”

  Eventually, the two parties settled and Hudson received $209,000. He never heard from Walter Payton again.

  Two months after shooting Hutson, Payton flew to New Jersey to attend the Mike Tyson–Michael Spinks heavyweight championship bout at the Atlantic City Convention Center. Though far from a diehard boxing fan, Payton was happy to trade in his status for some free tickets to the biggest bout of the year (albeit one that would last ninety-one seconds). For a man getting used to being out of the spotlight, the night proved a nice ego boost. Along with such luminaries as Sean Penn, Milton Berle, and George Steinbrenner, Payton was introduced to the crowd of 21,785, receiving a loud ovation when he stood and waved. He signed an endless stream of autographs, and posed for dozens of pictures.

  In the months since his last NFL game, Payton had spent much of his time pursuing women not named Connie Payton. Though his tiny rear office at Studebaker’s was a suitable place to conduct professional business (visitors marveled at the dozens of football helmets that lined the walls), it doubled as, in the words of Eamonn Cummins, “Walter’s fuck pad.” A bouncer first hired by the club in 1987, Cummins was in charge of determining who could—and couldn’t—enter Studebaker’s. He stood sentry at the front entrance, telephone by his side, and informed Payton of visitors. The majority of the club’s female patrons were hardly Heather Locklear–esque. These were fanny-packers, not miniskirters; women with careers and, oftentimes, children, looking for a couple of hours of escape.

  Payton, however, drew his own special genre. He would jump into the deejay booth during especially crowded nights, spin a couple of records, and emerge with fifteen phone numbers.

  “So many females came by to see Walter,” Cummins said. “He’d call me back to his office and say ‘A woman is going to be here in ten minutes. I want you to get her and bring her right back.’ They were always the same—bimbo-ish, big hair, always white, always kind of stupid. They were cheesy, mostly twenty-five–ish. I remember one Saturday night early in my career, a girl showed up at eight on a Saturday n
ight. An hour or so later she left, and then another girl showed up. I went back there to bring her in and he was just laying on his couch, waiting and ready.”

  In Atlantic City, Payton’s wandering eye zeroed in on a long-legged twenty-one-year-old flight attendant of Puerto Rican descent. She had brown eyes, bright teeth, wavy hair, and large breasts, and Payton made his move while both were waiting on a convention center line. Lita Gonzalez had never heard of Walter Payton, and certainly had no idea that he was a legendary football player. She could, however, tell that he was somebody. “He walked very confidently,” Gonzalez said. “With an air of importance.”

  The two struck up a conversation, word about his wife never escaping Payton’s mouth. As always, Payton was complimentary and smooth. Just as in football he used his hands to protect the pigskin, with women he used his hands to gently touch a shoulder, subtly brush back a stray hair. “He was very charming,” said Gonzalez. The two went out to a club after the fight. The next morning Payton caught a flight back to Chicago and Gonzalez went to work for Continental Airlines. She assumed she would never hear from him again. Instead, he called incessantly. “When Walter wanted a girl, his approach was to call, call, call, call,” said Quirk. “He would overwhelm people with contact. That’s what he did with Lita. He made his interest clear.”

  Although Connie likely understood the nature of her marriage, she refused to let the public know. Thanks to her husband, her life was a comfortable one. She lived in a breathtaking home, employed a live-in nanny, shopped at the fanciest department stores, and dined out as she pleased. According to Holmes, Connie once approached him about possibly leaving Walter. “I told her the truth,” he said. “ ‘Connie, it’s a helluva lot easier being Mrs. Walter Payton than the ex–Mrs. Walter Payton.’ ”

  If Walter saw retirement as an opportunity to forge closer ties with his children, the steps he took were, at best, minimal. Though far from a disinterested father, he was, even without football, a largely absent one. No longer living at the home on 34 Mudhank, he checked in as often as he could, took them on trips every now and then, stopped by the house regularly. With Jarrett approaching his eighth birthday and Brittney having just turned three, retirement had provided Payton with an opportunity to finally become deeply involved in their day-to-day lives. Instead, Walter’s wayward search for meaning and significance and excitement took him to a most quizzical place: the racetrack.